Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
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| Textual Feature | Appearance |
|---|---|
| passage deleted with a strikethrough mark | |
| passage deleted by overwritten added letters | |
| passage added above the line | passage with added text above |
| passage added on the line | passage with added text inline |
| passage added in the margin | passage with text added in margin |
| handwritten addition to a typewritten letter | typed passage with added handwritten text |
| missing or unreadable text | missing text noted with "[illegible]" |
| uncertain transcriptions | word[?] |
| notes written by someone other than Willa Cather | Note in another's hand |
| printed letterhead text | printed text |
| text printed on postcards, envelopes, etc. | printed text |
| text of date and place stamps | stamped text |
| passage written by Cather on separate enclosure. | written text |
Please don't think me a rude thing. I am always swept under by things when I first get back, and this time I have had a good deal to do about getting Jack4 settled in his new school. He is delighted with everything here, and I only wish I could be here with him all winter.
I read Mr. Florance5's verses with the greatest interest. I certainly know very few men outside the ranks of professional writers who can write a good verses as the best of these. I like "To a Lily"6 and the one to a bust of Caesar7 best. But I can't help thinking that a man with a good ear for verse must find dry pickings in Red Cloud8. The two of you are perfect wonders to me; I don't see how you stand it and keep young and jolly. Two years of it would make me one Josie Igou9—if that is the way her forbidding name is spelled.
Tell your husband I think he failed as markedly as all other poets with the war, for I think that much below the others!
Affectionately always Willa Mrs. Sidney Florance1 Red Cloud8 Nebraska PITTSBURGH, PA2 OCT 7 1914 530 PMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2938.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2938
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only. Includes one handwritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Beatrix Mizer Florance 1
- Date letter was written
- [October 7, 1914]
- Place letter was written
- Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Sidney and Beatrice "Trix" Mizer Florance Collection, National Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE
Individual Annotations
1180 Murray Hill Avenue (Pittsburgh, PA): Located in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PA, now part of the Murray Hill Avenue Historic District, 1180 Murray Hill was the home of Judge Samuel A. McClung and his family. Cather lived there at Isabelle McClung’s invitation from 1901 to 1906. She returned there to visit multiple times until 1915, often writing during these visits.
Person Annotations
Florance, Beatrix Elizabeth Mizer (1875-1963) (“Trixie,”
“Trix”). Cather’s childhood friend. Beatrix Mizer was born in
Ohio in a German-American family. They moved to Red Cloud, NE, in 1884.
Cather later recalled that when she first enrolled in school in Red Cloud,
“Trix Mizer was the prettiest little girl I had ever seen.” They acted
together in an 1888 production of “Beauty and the Beast” at the Red Cloud
Opera House. Mizer graduated from Red Cloud High School in 1893 and studied
voice at the Chicago Conservatory of Music 1897-1898, qualifying as a music
teacher, and at the Chicago College of Music 1899-1900. She married Sidney
Florance in 1903. In 1909 the couple moved to Red Cloud, where they settled
and raised a family. Beatrix’s Chicago musical studies and return to Red
Cloud may have inspired elements of Cather’s novel Lucy
Gayheart (1935). Cather’s correspondence with both Florances began
as early as 1914 and extended through the 1940s.
Cather, John (1892-1959) (“Jack”). Cather’s brother.
Born and raised in Red Cloud, NE, Jack was the seventh child and
fourth son of Charles and Virginia Cather. He was nearly two decades younger
than Willa Cather, and she was a doting older sister when he was a small
boy. Because she missed him after her 1896 move to Pittsburgh, PA, she wrote
several poems about him and the story “Jack-a-Boy” (1901). After graduating
from Red Cloud High School in 1912, Jack studied for two years at University
of Nebraska in Lincoln. With Willa Cather’s encouragement, in 1914 he
enrolled at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh to study
engineering. Willa Cather was then living in New York City but traveled to
Pittsburgh to help him settle in and enjoyed visiting him and supported his
decision to change his major to theater. It is not clear whether he
graduated from Carnegie Tech but the British government trained him as a
chemist so he could inspect munitions factories. While working in Smethport,
PA, he met Irma Wells, and they married in 1918. They had two children,
Catherine and Ella Faye. After World War I, he worked as a chemical engineer
in the oil industry in Cincinnati, OH, Casper, WY, and Bradford, PA. In 1936
he moved to Whittier, CA, and became a business partner with his brothers
Douglass and James in an oil production company. He died in Long Beach, CA.
Willa Cather mentions him frequently in letters, but she seems to have had
little contact with him and his family in later years, and no letters from
her to him have surfaced.
Florance, Sidney Riddell (1877-1957). Canadian-American banker and amateur poet. Born in Collingwood, Ontario, Canada, a younger son of Edwin Charles Florance and Margaret Riddell Florance, Sidney Florance emigrated to the U.S. with his family in 1881. He was working in Chicago where he met Cather’s friend, musician Beatrix Mizer. They married in 1903, settled in Red Cloud, NE, and had five children. He succeeded his father-in-law, Benjamin Mizer, as head of the Webster County Bank, and handled local business matters for Cather when she no longer had family living in Red Cloud.
Julius Caesar (c. 102 BCE-44 BCE). Roman statesman and general. In the 58-49 Gallic Wars (58 BCE-49 BCE) Caesar brought all of Gaul under Roman control, establishing his reputation as a military leader. At the time of his assassination by C. Cassius Longinus and Marcus Junius Brutus, he was dictator for life of Rome. In a number of Willa Cather’s works, most notably The Song of the Lark (1915) and The Professor’s House (1925), characters read Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War.
Igou, Josephine (1854-1934) (“Josie”). Red Cloud music teacher. Born in Bellwood, Pennsylvania, third daughter of farmer Emanuel Roller Igou and Mary Stoutenberg Igou, Josephine Igou and her family moved to Clarion, IL, before 1860. After her father’s death in 1890, Josephine and her mother moved to Red Cloud, NE, where she was a music teacher for many years. She was buried in Hutchinson, KS, where one of her brothers lived.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
"To a Lily" (unpublished) by Sidney Florance
